An Enduring Offbeat Welshman

Rhys Ifans sheds goofy image for serious Love in Roger Michell's adaptation of book

For the past five years Welsh character actor Rhys Ifans, 36, has been teetering on the brink of typecasting hell following his breakthrough role as Hugh Grant's scuzzy flatmate in the 1999 British comedy Notting Hill. His scene-stealing role as Spike, bare-bottom sequence and all, shot him to international fame; he was even squeezed onto the film's poster at the 11th hour, next to stars Grant and Julia Roberts. As offers came pouring in from Hollywood, the lanky six-foot-two actor with a flyaway blonde mop and limpid blue eyes, found himself in such big-money lowbrow comedies as The Replacements (as a washed-up football player sidelined by coach Keanu Reeves) and Little Nicky (as the lesser sibling to Adam Sandler's son of Satan). But these parts did nothing for his career. That's why Ifans jumped at the chance of starring in a "serious" picture when his Notting Hill director Roger Michell offered him the part of Jed in Enduring Love.
Based on a book by Ian McEwan, Enduring Love begins at a picnic shared by Joe (Daniel Craig) and Claire (Samantha Morton) in the English countryside. Their idyll is shattered when they see a hot-air balloon escape its moorings and float away with a small boy trapped inside. Joe runs and grabs the rope dangling from the balloon and is joined by four other bystanders - strangers who become intimately connected in the ensuing action. When a sudden up thrust of wind yanks the balloon skyward, all let go save one man. He, too, will jump, but the fall will kill him. When Joe is asked by one of the survivors - a scruffy loner named Jed (Ifans) - to pray for the men who fell too far, the ultra-rationalist Joe scoffs. Then Jed starts stalking Joe, forcing the latter to withdraw into an alternative world.
Tandem talked to Rhys Ifans when he was in Toronto recently.

Tell me about Jed.
"He's a strange character, but not unhinged in any way. He's a loner who finds a kind of solace in religion. But when this horrific event happens and he witnesses it, and when he witnesses the actual evidence of that broken corpse in the field, the only person whose with him is Joe. So, both of them are thrown into this most dramatic stress condition. And for Jed, Joe becomes the only other witnesses, so in a sense he becomes a coping mechanism for dealing with this horrific image. And that fixation becomes an obsession, which turns into a love. So it's kind of a cumulative process that starts with a need to share an experience, and then it becomes an illness. When love isn't reciprocated or returned it's loveless. It's such a strange emotion; if you're getting it back then the insanity is contained, but if you're not it's destructive and dangerous."

But in a way they're equally obsessed, and it's not exactly clear who is mad.
"Absolutely. Jed doesn't feel for one second that he is mad. He is convinced that Joe is mad because he can't see that they were brought together, that they were meant to be together. So Jed is concerned about Joe's state of mind in a really loving and innocent way. Jed is almost a child in many ways; he doesn't have the maturity of emotion to function."

Did you enjoy playing this character, was it challenging?
"Yes, it was challenging, but very, very deeply rewarding. It was painful at times to play a character that is so utterly alone and to sustain a state of mind that in Jed's case is so giving, loving and open and have nothing come back was kind of brutalizing at times. But when you're an actor, in some kind of sick way you enjoy being brutalized."

You've tended to play more perky comedic characters in the past. Was this appealing to you to be the villain, the creepy stalker type?
"I didn't see him as a creepy stalker type at all. Jed doesn't see himself as a stalker, he becomes a stalker. In my book Joe is a stalker too, and that's the condition. For me it wasn't a simplistic career choice, like I had to do something dark. It was just a fantastic story. On one level, structurally in its form, it's a great thriller, but then it has this very interesting debate running through it that gives it a resonance, and the appeal to me was number one, that, and number two working with Roger [Michell] who has been very loyal to me. And also to work with Daniel [Craig] and Samantha [Morton], both of them, who I know socially in London. We are all very good friends, and have never had the opportunity to work together. So all these ingredients luckily came together at the right time and it was that easy."

So Jed for you is really the victim...
"Yes he is. When we started, my thoughts on Jed were Jesus from a broken home. But cursed himself, had a violent moment and that violence comes through sheer frustration, anger and a deep sense of betrayal. He's not pre-meditated to be violent. He doesn't go to her [Claire] home with the intention to be violent; he hurts himself before he hurts anyone else. And that knife is the craft in the moment of loveless."

Was the intense opening sequence exhausting and exhilarating?
"Definitely. Shooting with balloons is an unknown entity; they're as an unreliable as actors. Yes it was very difficult stuff and we got to do some very physical work with that balloon. We got to fly with it, hung off it. It became such a character and the first sequence is what we shot. "

McEwan was involved in the making of the film. Does having the author around unnerve you actors?
"Well it would generally. Of course that wasn't possible in Vanity Fair, with him [William Makepeace Thackeray] being dead for the last 200 years; and when you do Shakespeare it's never and issue. I've never had an experience with the author of the novel. I generally don't enjoy having the screenwriters on set. Of course there are exceptions, but in this case having the author of the novel was kind of beautiful; it's the right sort of passage. He wasn't there everyday. He had absolutely no involvement in developing our characters emotionally, so his involvement was for us distant. But it was nice to have, between him and Roger, two father figures on the set. And when he saw that initial balloon, just to see him deeply moved... it must be extraordinary to write a novel and witness it."

Had your character been in love with a man before?
"It isn't a strictly homosexual obsession, it's higher than that. The kiss at the end is not about wanting to make love to Joe; it's about wanting to consume him."

What are you working on now?
"I'm shooting a film called Clomaphobia, which is another very dark piece written and directed by Martha Fiennes. It's kind of a cross section of English or London society where we see the super rich and this sort of terrine of London life. It's five stories, so it's the English Magnolia. Penelope Cruz plays a single mother. I play a policeman who can't be a policeman anymore because he finds it too painful. He becomes a social worker and his first assignment is to take care of the single mother taking care of her daughter. They later discover that she is dying of cancer, and because of the clumsy bureaucracy she hasn't been told in time. And because she loves her daughter so much like any mother does, she doesn't want to go into hospital or else she will lose her daughter. So I decide to nurse her in her final days."

Why the title Clomaphobia?
"Clomaphobia is a fear of colour and you'll have to ask Martha Fiennes why she choose that title."

You were once the lead singer for the punk band Super Furry Animals. Are you happy with the decision to pursue acting?
"Absolutely. I had so much more to learn as an actor."

Do you still keep your hand in music?
"I still hang out with them all the time; most of my friends are musicians. In my down time, how I entertain myself is I'd rather watch a band."
Enduring Love is currently playing in local cinemas.

Publication Date: 2004-11-07
Story Location: http://tandemnews.com/viewstory.php?storyid=4584